For purposes of making a likelihood determination, work experience means skills and abilities the individual will acquire through work they will perform while participating in their plan. The work experience should provide the individual with skills that they can use in past relevant or similar work.

The individual must be expected to perform such work long enough to learn to do it, and the experience must result in work performed at the substantial gainful activity level. The physical and mental demands of the work should be such that the individual would still be able to meet those demands despite a reduction in residual functional capacity.

Education means formal schooling or other training which contributes to the individual’s ability to meet vocational requirements, for example, reasoning ability, communication skills, and arithmetic.

The education and/or training should provide for direct entry into skilled or semi-skilled work that exists in the national economy at the substantial gainful activity level. The physical and mental demands of the work should be such that the individual would still be able to meet those demands despite a reduction in residual functional capacity.

Skilled or semi-skilled work experience should provide the individual with skills that will enable them to adjust to other work (different from past relevant work) that exists in the national economy, at the substantial gainful activity level, despite a possible future reduction in their residual functional capacity.

To evaluate the skills the individual will acquire as a result of completing their employment plan (or continuing in the plan for a specified period of time) and to determine the existence in the national economy of work the individual will be able to do despite a possible future reduction in their RFC, the examiner will need to know if the work goal is an unskilled, semi-skilled, or skilled occupation. The examiner should use the Dictionary of Occupational Titles at http://www.oalj.dol.gov/libdot.htm for occupational information. Additional resources for classifying occupations are VR specialists at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/work/ServiceProviders/rehabproviders.html, and the Occupational Information Network at http://online.onetcenter.org/.

In classifying occupations, use the following definitions:

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  Unskilled work involves simple duties that can be learned on the job in a short period of time and requires little or no judgment.

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  Semi-skilled work requires some skills and judgment but does not require doing the more complex work duties.

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  Skilled work requires an individual to use judgment to determine the tasks to be performed and may require dealing with people, facts, figures or abstract ideas at a high level of complexity.

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  Transferability of skills means skills that can be used in other jobs. Skills are transferable when the skilled or semi-skilled work activities the individual did in past work can be used to meet the requirements of skilled or semi-skilled work activities of other jobs or kinds of work. Transferability depends largely on the similarity of occupationally significant work activities among different jobs. See DI 25015.015A.3.g. for special rules regarding transferability of skills for individuals age 55 or over.

Work is considered to exist in the national economy when it exists in significant numbers either in the region where the individual lives or in several other regions of the country. It does not matter whether the work exists in the immediate area in which the individual lives, a specific job vacancy exists, or the individual would be hired if they applied for work. Isolated jobs that exist only in very limited numbers in relatively few locations outside of the region where the individual lives are not considered work which exists in the national economy.